


insomnia

by girlsarewolves



Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Genre: Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mild Sexual Content, Oral Sex, Post Movie, triggering content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 20:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy doesn't sleep much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	insomnia

**Author's Note:**

> Set a couple of years after the movie. Trigger/content warnings for mental health issues, mild references to past child abuse and implied current abuse as well as references to murder.

* * *

Nancy doesn't sleep much.  
  
She chugs coffee and takes caffeine pills with however many hours energy drinks. She works the graveyard shift and goes home to a cold shower.  
  
It wakes you up if you stay in there till your bones ache and you feel like your lips are turning blue.  
  
Then it's off to the next job, the next hit of caffeine and whatever supplements that are meant to keep you awake that she's bought recently.  
  
When the edges of everything start to blur, and her eyes refuse to refocus (and she feels steam hot and damp on her skin) she goes home to a lumpy sofa it's impossible to sleep deep on. Gets a few minutes of shut eye.  
  
Her doctor tells her it's murder on her brain; she just smiles wanly and tells him, "So's sleep."  
  
"Nancy, I'm really worried about you." And her mom is - there's that pleading, soft pitched tone that she's realized is her mother's way of trying to guilt and manipulate Nancy into doing what Mom thinks is best - but Nancy promises she's fine.  
  
And she is. She's fine as long as she doesn't sleep much.  
  
Functioning on fumes is easy for her now. Years of practice and all. She works and works and goes to school and gets cold showers and eats and drinks anything and everything that supposedly helps you stay awake.  
  
"You can't stay awake forever, Nancy. Everyone sleeps. Everyone dreams," Quentin warns her in a text.  
  
He's tried calling. There were days when his ringtone went off five, six, sometimes up to ten times before he finally got the hint. Then he'd call the next day, as if she had a sudden change of heart (or would finally give in).  
  
Nancy's not that kind of person. She's learned she has a stubborn streak that runs as deep as the invisible wounds a bastard named Fred Krueger left her when she was four years old.  
  
She deletes the text immediately after reading - but she won't forget it. She'll hold on to it mentally and think of it when she's feeling low. When her eyelids droop and her head burns and the urge to scream because everything's so heavy and slow and wouldn't a little sleep make it all better?  
  
Everyone sleeps. Everyone dreams, Nancy.  
  
And she can almost hear him whispering those words in her ear (she can almost feel his breath).  
  
Thanks for the pep talk, she types out before hitting End and saves to drafts. Whether she'll ever send it isn't important. She has a dozen replies waiting; thanks for nothing, you're one to talk, after everything you want me to think I'm crazy just because you don't dream of him anymore.  
  
It's not my fault I'm his favorite and he doesn't give a shit about you.  
  
That one is the one she's gone to the most often - finger lingering on send because she can see the guilt and the hurt on his face, and maybe part of her wants him to remember what it's like to have someone you love strike you.  
  
But she never follows through; maybe she's scared that all she'll get after that is silence. If she doesn't hand him the scissors, he might never cut the last of their ties.  
  
"Why don't you ever call me back?" he shouted in a voicemail once.  
  
Because if I don't hurt you he will.  
  
Because if I reach out to you or to my mother or to anyone at all he'll be there waiting for all my walls to break. Because I can't get close enough for your emotions to seep into me and pull and tug at mine. Don't you remember how easy it is to let them out when you're exhausted? When you're so tired, so sleepy that it takes every ounce of concentration just to keep your eyes open - so of course you can't concentrate on controlling your emotions.  
  
You remember that, don't you, Quentin? When you yelled and snapped and told me I was crazy because you wanted to believe we weren't in danger?  
  
She puts her ringer on silence for a week after that. She doesn't even want to know when he texts her.  
  
"You look tired, Nancy," they tell her at her new day job. They don't know her well enough to know this is her usual look. They'll learn.  
  
There's a cute guy a year older than her who tells her not to listen to them, she looks beautiful. But maybe she should cut herself some slack soon. He flashes her smiles now and then, winks a few times during rushes. Doesn't judge when she downs a couple of caffeine pills with a cup of coffee.  
  
She goes home with him two weeks in. Fakes it because they're in a single bed and the walls feel too tight and doesn't spend the night.  
  
Better to leave before he wants to know why she's asking how to work his coffee machine (better to leave before the blood hits the walls).  
  
When he comes into work two days later looking shitty and sore and won't meet her gaze, she knows he dreamed.  
  
Everyone sleeps, Nancy. Everyone dreams.  
  
She would feel sorry for him if she could, but he's alive and breathing and that's better off than the first two boys she slept with. (She cries later when she thinks of them; she didn't even know them that well and can barely remember their names, but she picked them because she needed some kind of human connection, some kind of physical comfort and relief. She picked them because they weren't Quentin - and that's why she feels guilty when she lays on her sofa trying not to sleep.)  
  
He's always there when she closes her eyes for too long. He's there when her peripheral vision fuzzes and blurs. He's there when she blinks a few times, and then he's gone.  
  
She hooks up with a stranger at the bar three blocks from her apartment. Goes into the alley and ignores the growl when the guy goes down on her. She laughs because she's drunk even though she hasn't had a drop to drink - too risky, too out of control - and there are phantom razors against her skin.  
  
It's euphoria when she comes, and she can barely stand or stay awake, and her fling ditches because she's crazy (she can't stop laughing and crying and shaking as months of tension fades and physical relief washes over her).  
  
He's shouting in the distance. Calling her slut and bitch and whore and there's steam against her skin and the concrete under her hands and knees where she's collapsed gets warm.  
  
Everyone sleeps. Everyone dreams.  
  
Thanks for the pep talk, Quentin.  
  
She claws her way back to her feet, fingers curled to get a meager grip on the wall. Everything is blurry, but she makes it home in one piece. Turns the coffee machine on and takes some caffeine pills with a however many hours energy drink. Stumbles to the shower and steps under the frigid cold water in all her clothes and laughs herself sore curled up on the floor.  
  
He's standing over her. She can almost make out his outline if she closes her eyes halfway. Waiting, seething, twitching - metal rasping against metal.  
  
"Fuck you," she gasps out between hysterics.  
  
Nancy doesn't sleep much.


End file.
